sandra pady

Founder of the Donkey Sanctuary of Canada.

Past Posts:

Past Posts:

What is it about Ed?

Ed is a spotted Standard donkey, on the slender side these days because we have had him on a special diet in recent months as a way to discourage his too frequent attacks of laminitis/founder. Ed is a quiet creature, not given to quick movements or pushy ways. He is just Ed. And therein lies the mystery.

Like all donkeys he is preoccupied with satisfying his needs. Food and water are crucially important, of course, and then there are those many hours each day when he stands and rests, often with ears at half mast, thinking about I-don’t-know-what.

People often ask me, why donkeys? Or, what is so special about them?

Well, my answers are sometimes very long and somewhat convoluted as I search for adjectives to describe the way that I feel when I am in the donkeys’ company. But they don’t need to be because it is really very simple. All of the donkeys’ energy is concentrated on right now, this second. Our western concept of time: past, present and future just does not work with them.

I do think that First Nations people the world over can understand ever so easily what needs to be said here. For many of these groups (the Hopi, for instance), their languages do not have words for past or future. The closest they come to this are the words for ‘sooner’ or ‘later’. Ed’s vocabulary doe not even include those.

Much of the time, Ed puts me under his spell at the drop of a hat. His energy field is so very concentrated on just where he is at that moment that it can physically affect my rate of movement. Yes, indeed, the Sanctuary Farm is a peaceful place as so many people have found it to be. And it is caused by all of that good donkey energy just pulling us to be still and in the moment.